I know I’m kinda late today with the writer blog, but that whole crazy week thing continues. But Jimmy is safely in Kansas City for Spectrum Fantasy Art Live with Allen Williams and soon a whole slew of other amazing artists. Starting a bit tomorrow night and then for the run of the weekend, I’ll be at Dallas Comic Con – where I’ll be in the same room (at least on Saturday) as William Shatner and Richard Dean Anderson…

Now… for this week’s writer thing. There is a Bru about to completely go HAHAHAHA…brewing. I saw this article by David Gaughran come up a couple of days ago – and then picked up again today – which worked as a reminder. It’s this article about Penguin and Author Solutions.

It’s fallen off the radar some, but in July of 2012, Penguin bought Author Solutions. Author Solutions is one of the biggest vanity presses in the entire world. They have been high on the list of scams to avoid when warning new writers. Writer Beware has had Author Solutions on their lists for years because they have bilked writers out of money for a very long time under a lot of different names.

The hope/assumption was that when Penguin bought Author Solutions, Penguin would make it a legitimate business entity. That hasn’t happened. And in fact, according to the article – that links to a whole bunch of other articles – they are taking Author Solutions global and put one of their head guys on Penguin’s board.

And it’s not just Penguin – though they’re the biggest and most overt about owning a service that bilks writers from money instead of having the money flow to them. Always check your fine print. Make sure if you’re working with a publisher that YOU are not paying THEM.

This is the second time THIS YEAR we’re talking about a Big Six House not wanting to pay authors – the digital imprint contracts were the last one. We got those changed by talking about it. As the article states, no one seems to want to talk about this big ole plaid elephant in the room. We need to talk about it and run from it.